As waste volumes continue to grow, more and more stringent demands are being made of waste handling with regard to hygiene and the environment. The Envac vacuum system for waste handling in residential areas is a long-term investment offering both financial and environmental benefits, as well as other added value.

Improved residential environment

When an Envac system is installed, the need for heavy waste transportation in the area is reduced by up to 90 %. This in turn leads to fewer traffic jams, as well as less noise and a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. The road traffic environment around people’s homes is made safer. And as the system is hermetically sealed, it will not attract pests or insects or release noxious odours.

Greater availability and enhanced service level

As the waste inlets are connected together in an underground pipe system, it is possible to place great emphasis on the wellbeing of residents when positioning them. Positioning them centrally keeps the area tidier and results in less waste being left lying around. System availability means happier users and greater levels of recycling.

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Last Operational deployment for RAN Sea King helicopters in Australia supporting 2011 flood efforts in Queensland, prior to retirement from service later in the year. Pic taken at dusk, Roma Airport Aust.

STEVE G wrote:I used to work on these, it was even more complicated because it had hydraulic blade folding to get the helicopter into shipboard hangers:

Scientists at The Australian National University (ANU) have developed a new spray-on material with a remarkable ability to repel water.

The new protective coating could eventually be used to waterproof mobile phones, prevent ice from forming on aeroplanes or protect boat hulls from corroding.

"The surface is a layer of nanoparticles, which water slides off as if it's on a hot barbecue," said PhD student William Wong, from the Nanotechnology Research Laboratory at the ANU Research School of Engineering.

The team created a much more robust coating than previous materials by combining two plastics, one tough and one flexible.

"It's like two interwoven fishing nets, made of different materials," Mr Wong said.

The water-repellent or superhydrophobic coating is also transparent and extremely resistant to ultraviolet radiation.

Lead researcher and head of the Nanotechnology Research Laboratory, Associate Professor Antonio Tricoli, said the new material could change how we interact with liquids.

"It will keep skyscraper windows clean and prevent the mirror in the bathroom from fogging up," Associate Professor Tricoli said.

"The key innovation is that this transparent coating is able to stabilise very fragile nanomaterials resulting in ultra-durable nanotextures with numerous real-world applications."

The team developed two ways of creating the material, both of which are cheaper and easier than current manufacturing processes.

One method uses a flame to generate the nanoparticle constituents of the material. For lower temperature applications, the team dissolved the two components in a sprayable form.

In addition to waterproofing, the new ability to control the properties of materials could be applied to a wide range of other coatings, said Mr Wong.

"A lot of the functional coatings today are very weak, but we will be able to apply the same principles to make robust coatings that are, for example, anti-corrosive, self-cleaning or oil-repellent," he said.

The research is published in ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2016, 8, 13615−13623.

New solar cell is more efficient, costs less than its counterparts
Exposed in step-like formation, layers of new photovoltaic cell harvest more of sun’s energy.

MIT News Office
August 29, 2016

The following is adapted from a Masdar Institute article by Erica Solomon.

The cost of solar power is beginning to reach price parity with cheaper fossil fuel-based electricity in many parts of the world, yet the clean energy source still accounts for just slightly more than 1 percent of the world’s electricity mix.
Solar, or photovoltaic (PV), cells, which convert sunlight into electrical energy, have a large role to play in boosting solar power generation globally, but researchers still face limitations to scaling up this technology. For example, developing very high-efficiency solar cells that can convert a significant amount of sunlight into usable electrical energy at very low costs remains a significant challenge.
A team of researchers from MIT and the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology may have found a way around this seemingly intractable tradeoff between efficiency and cost. The team has developed a new solar cell that combines two different layers of sunlight-absorbing material to harvest a broader range of the sun’s energy. The researchers call the device a “step cell,” because the two layers are arranged in a stepwise fashion, with the lower layer jutting out beneath the upper layer, in order to expose both layers to incoming sunlight. Such layered, or “multijunction,” solar cells are typically expensive to manufacture, but the researchers also used a novel, low-cost manufacturing process for their step cell.
The team’s step-cell concept can reach theoretical efficiencies above 40 percent and estimated practical efficiencies of 35 percent, prompting the team’s principal investigators — Masdar Institute’s Ammar Nayfeh, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, and MIT’s Eugene Fitzgerald, the Merton C. Flemings-SMA Professor of Materials Science and Engineering — to plan a startup company to commercialize the promising solar cell.
Fitzgerald, who has launched several startups, including AmberWave Systems Corporation, Paradigm Research LLC, and 4Power LLC, thinks the step cells might be ready for the PV market within the next year or two.
The team presented its initial proof-of-concept step cell in June at the 43rd IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference in Portland, Oregon. The researchers have also reported their findings at the 40th and 42nd annual conferences, and in the Journal of Applied Physics and IEEE Journal of Photovoltaics.

An unmanned ocean glider is being released on Saturday in the Perth Canyon, about 20km west of Rottnest, starting a voyage of discovery that will end in Sri Lanka, 10 months from now.

It is the first time an autonomous underwater vehicle of this type has been used in long-distance oceanographic research in the Indian Ocean and Professor Charitha Pattiaratchi of the University of Western Australia Oceans Institute expects to gain valuable information about temperature, current and salinity.

The 2.2m glider generates forward propulsion by altering its buoyancy, sinking to depths of 1km before returning to the surface twice a day to transmit its position and ocean readings via satellite to Pattiaratchi’s team, who can fine-tune its course in near real-time.

Prof. Pattiaratchi said the glider’s course would follow the historic four-year voyage of the HMS Challenger, which set off in 1872, and the data collected would be compared to that of those early oceanographic pioneers to see how the Indian Ocean has changed.
Such a comparison could inform our understanding of climate change and produce more accurate modelling in order to better predict what is happening in our oceans.

If all goes to plan, the $250,000 glider will eventually return to Rottnest, via Reunion Island or Mauritius, in three years.
Follow Challenger Glider Mission via the Australian National Facility for Ocean Gliders website: http://www.anfog.uwa.edu.au.

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"Amazon wins patent for a flying warehouse that will deploy drones to deliver parcels in minutes

Amazon has been awarded a patent for a giant flying warehouse that acts as a launchpad for drones to deliver items within minutes.

The U.S. e-commerce giant described plans for an "airborne fulfillment center" (AFC) such as an airship or blimp that would float at an altitude of around 45,000. The airship will be stocked with lots of products.

When a customer places an order, a drone or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) will fly down and deliver the package. Amazon insists that this would require little power because the drone would be gliding down rather than having to take off and land.

"When the UAV departs the AFC, it may descend from the high altitude of the AFC using little or no power other than to guide the UAV towards its delivery destination and/or to stabilize the UAV as it descends," the patent filing explains.

First attempts to provide a semblance of air traffic control were based on simple "rules of the road" (European sponsored International Convention for Air Navigation, 1919). Air traffic control was first introduced at London's Croydon Airport in 1921. Archie League, who controlled aircraft using colored flags at what is today Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, is often considered the first air traffic controller.

The first air traffic regulations were established in the United States by the passage of the Air Commerce Act (1926).
Around 1930, radio equipped control towers were established by some local authorities and in 1933, instrument flying started.

By 1935, several airlines jointly established the first Airway Traffic Control centers to safeguard their aircraft against midair collisions. In 1936, this preliminary effort was transferred to the Federal Government, and the first-generation Air Traffic Control (ATC) System was born.

In 1935, in the U.S., airlines using the Chicago, Cleveland, and Newark airports agreed to coordinate the handling of airline traffic between those cities. In December, the first Airway Traffic Control Center opened at Newark, New Jersey. The first-generation Air Traffic Control (ATC) System was born. Additional centers at Chicago and Cleveland followed in 1936.

USA centric, but a good description of how the system evolved in the USA:

WW2 saw the development of radar and big advances in radio communication equipment. Post war saw the expansion of international passenger air services, and the start of what we take for granted today. As part of that it became more and more necessary to have both better navigation and reporting systems to keep track of the growing traffic, both in terms of safety and efficiency.

In the days before satellites and GPS, navigation was the primary concern. Many radar and radio based systems evolved, such as NDB beacons which transmit an identifying signal using Morse code. Another radio based system used extensively was the Decca Navigator System that used an array of ground based beacons. Although mainly developed for ship use during WW2 it continued in use up until the 1990s.

Basic primary radar systems which just showed a target as a spot on a screen, evolved into SSR, or Secondary Surveillance Systems, which employ a transponder on the aircraft that the ground based radar station “interrogates”. These transponders evolved into the latest types that include aircraft information, such as speed, altitude and the ID of the aircraft. Each aircraft is issued a unique number by air traffic control as part of its flight plan.

There are many other systems employed to ensure aircraft separation, such as designated “airways” that designate both altitude and direction, mostly used for international and intercontinental routes, quadrantal rules that split the 360 degrees of the compass into four sectors of 90 degrees, again employing published “rules”.

From the safety aspect, many systems have been developed that provide for constant monitoring of an aircraft’s position and progress. These systems are designed both to assist separation and provide for SAR, or search and rescue services.

The advent of GPS was the big game changer for both navigation and communication.

Developed by the US military and first launched in 1973, GPS has evolved into countless everyday uses, much in the same manner as cellular phone systems.

The evolution has been both rapid and diverse. From being restricted to use by the US military, too today’s use being pretty much taken for granted in everything from airliners, ships, road vehicles, cell phones, you name it and it very likely has some form of GPS is in use.

To restrict this post to just aircraft some of the following systems will be considered:

Aireon’s space-based global surveillance system is just Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) on a satellite. Instead of utilizing traditional radio receiver towers on the ground, Aireon has redesigned them into a flexible and highly effective space-grade receivers on Iridium’s second generation satellite constellation, Iridium NEXT. This will allow for 100 percent global surveillance using the same ADS-B signal that aircraft already transmit.

What is ADS-B?
ADS-B is a surveillance technique that relies on aircraft broadcasting their identity, a precise GPS position and other information derived from on-board systems. ADS-B is automatic because no work is required from the pilot or Air Traffic Controller (ATC). It is also dependent because it relies on on-board avionics to provide surveillance information to other parties. The data is broadcast every half a second from the aircraft and can be received without a contract.

ADS-B is seen as a key enabler of advanced global surveillance. It is cheaper than traditional radar infrastructure while providing a more frequent and accurate position to the controller, including enhanced data fields.

A key benefit of Aireon’s ADS-B data is that it can also be used for post-flight analysis and allow a live data feed to other aviation systems for enhanced resource planning and operational decision making.

• Automatic: periodically transmits information with no pilot or operator input required
• Dependent: position and velocity vector are derived from the Global Positioning System (GPS)
• Surveillance: a method of determining position of aircraft, vehicles or other asset
• Broadcast: transmitted information available to anyone with the appropriate receiving equipment

All of these systems rely on compatible equipment being installed on an aircraft, and that equipment being operational. The move is towards complete satellite coverage for both communication and navigation. The advent and implementation of ADS-B is expected to lead to it becoming the primary system for both ATC and SAR purposes. For both redundancy and economics, I think that it will be many years before some of the proven systems in use now become completely obsolete.

BUT, all of these systems, satellite or not, have to rely on the aircraft system being switched on and operational. In the case of MH 370 it appears that the installed systems were either turned off, or became non-operational for some other reason.

The system being quoted by the BBC is not new. What is new is the launching of a complete set of new satellites by the well-established satellite provider, Iridium.

“SpaceX began launching Iridium’s NEXT satellites, equipped with Aireon’s ADS-B receivers, from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on January 14th, 2017. By May 2017, FlightAware will begin providing services fusing Aireon’s space-based ADS-B with FlightAware’s existing flight tracking systems. By early 2018, Iridium and spaceX will have launched all 72 satellites (66 in-service and 6 on-orbit spares) and global ADS-B coverage will be available 24/7.” (http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/5897 ... -live.html)

All of this post is just a brief outline of a very complex system. It is intended as a general information post, not a technical exposé.

May you be in heaven half an hour before the devil know`s you`re dead!

"Hydrogen Has Been Turned To Metal, And It's About To Change The World

Metallic hydrogen is one of the holy grails of modern science. It would essentially be a magic material, creating everything from impossibly fast computers to hovering cars (themselves powered by hydrogen) to batteries that never need charging. It was also supposed to be impossible, as it would require pressures you can’t even find at the center of the Earth. But, now, amazingly, two Harvard scientists have reportedly pulled it off.

It literally took dropping liquid hydrogen to almost absolute zero and crushing it between two diamonds at thousands of times the pressure of Earth’s atmosphere, but… here we are. They’ve created metallic hydrogen. The next step is to ease the pressure and see if the theory that once made metal, hydrogen stays that way at “room temperature” holds.

If it does, then, not to oversell it or anything, but basically the entire course of human history has been irrevocably shifted. Metallic hydrogen is, in theory, a room-temperature superconductor. In a normal conductor, like a copper wire, there’s resistance — think of it like pouring chocolate syrup through a sieve. No matter how fine the sieve, or how slick the wires, some of that syrup is going to stay behind.

Superconductors, on the other hand, have no resistance. If you put electricity into a closed loop of superconducting wire, then the electricity stays there, running in a circle, waiting for you to take it out. We already use superconductors in an enormous number of places: MRI machines, maglev trains, high-grade electrical motors, and in scientific work like the Large Hadron Collider. The problem is that superconductors need to be cooled down to a very low temperature, usually -297° F, in order to work, and getting something that cold is an expensive proposition.

If a superconductor could work at normal temperatures, that would make them relatively cheap to use. Superconducting batteries could be connected to solar and wind farms, charged, and stored to use in rainy or calm days. Computers would become faster immediately. Electric motors would become even more power efficient and stronger than they already are. Even something as simple as your humble electrical transformer could be made vastly more efficient with room-temperature superconductors, meaning we’d get more out of every lump of coal and drop of oil we burned. Oh, and hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, so the raw materials are literally in our atmosphere.

Of course, metallic hydrogen might not be a room-temperature superconductor. This is literally material that has never existed before. It might simply dissolve. It might blow up. It might just turn back into plain old hydrogen. And this would mean a complete rewrite of the theory of physics. And even if it does work, you won’t see metallic hydrogen in your laptop tomorrow; this isn’t yet an industrial process. But if the theory holds, the world has just take an enormous step into the future we’ve always dreamed of."

CAMERAS that can see 90 times better than the human eye have captured stunning aerial images of Ningaloo Reef on WA's north west coast, with the technology being used to monitor its health.

Queensland University of Technology researchers used hyperspectral cameras to survey about 40 hectares of Ningaloo Reef at a flight height of 100 metres in a data-gathering mission to inform future research.

Hyperspectral cameras capture 270 bands in the visible and near-infrared portions of the light spectrum, compared to the three bands of red, green and blue that the human eye and normal cameras can detect.

Associate professor Felipe Gonzalez said the new lightweight hyperspectral cameras would open many possibilities for reef monitoring.

"Our data would make for a fascinating comparison between a remote pristine reef in Western Australia and a reef system under pressure from human activities along the Queensland coast," he said.

The cameras were placed on unmanned aerial vehicles to capture the reef, which spans 290km and is one of the longest near-shore reefs in the world.

Assoc Prof Gonzalez said the technology was already being used in agriculture to help farmers detect and treat diseases early.

May you be in heaven half an hour before the devil know`s you`re dead!